sing the public tended also in the opposite
direction of pleasing the hearer by means of agreeable combinations of
tone-colors, delightful symmetries of tone-forms, and the like. So at
the very time when composers of one class were laboring in opera for
the development of deep expression, those of another class were working
no less effectually for making the music merely shallow and pleasing.
Light operas dealing with shallow situations--comedy, farce, expressed
by means of light and pleasing music--came to occupy more and more the
operatic stage, where, after all, the question of amusement will always
prevail.

All of these different tendencies came later on to their expression in
music purely instrumental. We have seen already how Bach managed to
compose truly expressive music which, nevertheless, is first of all
strong music, yet highly humoristic and fanciful. Then Haydn and
Mozart introduced various types of pleasing and simply expressive
melody, but it is only in occasional moments that their music touches
the deeper feelings of the heart. It is music to admire for its
cleverness, to enjoy at times for its sweetness and tenderness, and its
fresh melodic symmetry; but it is only in very rare moments that the
accent of emotional individuality is given.

In Beethoven we find this quality for the first time illustrated in
instrumental music; and, along with this occasional accent of
intensity, we have also a great and inexhaustible variety of moods and
manners appertaining to the different sides of the mighty individuality
of this great tone-poet. Along with this variety of moods, which in
their inner nature must be regarded as representing different facets of
individuality, we have also in Beethoven a certain comprehensive
element. Everything that he says to us belongs somehow to a larger
whole, and that larger whole is the entire man of the composer. It is
like the conversation of some highly gifted person, which, while
lasting perhaps for only a few minutes, nevertheless affords us a
glimpse into a remarkable personality, and appears in our memory as a
chapter accidentally revealed out of the entire soul of the talker.

Hence in trying to form an idea of the individuality of Beethoven and
of the range and peculiar beauty of his music, we have to learn his
most characteristic moods in order to get the range of his genius; and
then to see how he combines these widely different moods into a
whole--as he does